Wednesday, October 26, 2005

In the beginning...

Well, you know what happened. But time passes--more years than can be counted by the smartest sloth hanging from the smartest tree. And through these huge spans of time and unnamed ages1, Man, having developed more brains than was good for him, got Ideas.

The first Idea was to come down from the trees. Man was once nominated for "Species of the Year" by the Galactic Council, but lost because of the poor dismount.

The second Idea was to start using sticks to hit each other with.2 Before long they had microwave ovens, sofas, and free time. Millions of people with lots of free time equals large quantities of boredom.

It's a little-known fact that when emotional states build up on a planetary scale, Things happen. Things are almost always bad, because the Universe itself is cynical, and not without a certain twisted sense of humor.

In this case, the Thing that happened was the creation of a god--but a god so inconsequential that it did not even have name. Gods created in this fashion abhor themselves by nature.3 They do not want to exist.4 This new god of boredom looked upon Man and sighed. He had his work cut out for him.

Let there be television. And there was television. And the god could feel his strength grow! Bugger. It seemed that Man could not put his newly granted gift to any useful purpose. By the time the gift had gone full circle5, the god decided to try something new.

Let Man assemble with one another and engage his mind. And there were board games.6 And they came in all shapes, size, and colors. And Man was no longer bored! In glory, the god could feel his strength wane. But before fading into divine oblivion, the god, in one evil breath, let loose upon Man one final curse.

Let all these games come in varying degrees of quality. Now Man had to congregate into large groups in order to debate the goodness and evilness of games. And Man realized that not everyone liked the same thing. And Man broke into many different groups, and waged war on the other groups.7

And then there was BoardGameGeek.

(1) Actually, they were named, but Uggh Ughh isn't very interesting.(2) By this point, the Galactic Council had given up on the planet entirely.(3) For example, the god created by vacuum.(4) And it has nothing to do with having a lowercase "g"...really.(5) Starting and ending with a bunch of people trapped on an island.(6) Actually, they existed long before this, but you try telling that to a god.(7) Those who remember the god curse him under their collective breaths for the shambles their lives have become.